Skepticism

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Have our senators read their Bible?

The reading for today is Genesis 18, in which Abraham bargains with God to save the city of Sodom.

22And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the LORD. 23And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? 24Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? 25That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? 26And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. 27And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: 28Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. 29And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. 30And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there. 31And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake. 32And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake. 33And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place.

And we look upon the Republican party today, as they gather to decide whether to elevate a drunkard who abuses women to the Supreme Court. Peradventure there will be one or two found there who will be among the righteous? Trust not in Susan Collins, who will play with the media as one does with a cat toy. Do not let your faith rest in Jeff Flake, who can speak piously while acting as a loyal servant of Satan. Face the day with equanimity, for either one Republican will find reason and justice in their soul, or the people shall rain upon the Republican party brimstone and fire, and overthrow that party, and all the electorate that grew upon the ground. Justice will be had one way or another.

Also remember the end of that story: the LORD only found one righteous man in Sodom, and he was the kind of guy who’d send out his daughters to be raped by a mob. The LORD destroyed his city. The “righteous” man ends up hiding in a cave near Zoar, drinking himself into oblivion, and fucking his own daughters.

Who says there are no good stories and no lessons to be learned from your Bible?

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Comments

The “righteous” man ends up hiding in a cave near Zoar, drinking himself into oblivion, and fucking his own daughters.

You and I operate on a whole different concept of righteousness than the authors of Genesis. For them, being righteous meant groveling before their god. It had nothing to do with how Lot treated his fellow humans (much less, mere women ). Lot was righteous because kept his god’s messengers from being raped and killed by the mob. That’s the only thing that mattered.

The same goes for Kavanagh and his Bible-humping supporters: He’s not righteous because he’s was some choirboy who refused strong drink, didn’t touch his betrothed until their wedding night, and helped his grandma shop for groceries. His righteousness comes from his willingness to do his masters (i.e. his God, Trump, moneyed interests, the Christian Right’s) bidding. Anything else is unimportant, even his treatment of mere women.

I don’t feel like googling this garbage, but iirc the bible has a rule saying that if a woman is raped but she doesn’t scream loud enough for people to come to her rescue then it therefore doesn’t count as rape.

You and I operate on a whole different concept of righteousness than the authors of Genesis. For them, being righteous meant groveling before their god…

To throw the authors of Genesis a bone (and in contrast to most of what follows in the Bible), they do give Abraham a bit more spine than that. “Oh, you’re gonna smite Sodom and Gomorrah, huh? Kill everyone? Even the righteous people living there? Well, how many righteous are you willing to write off as collateral damage anyhow? Fifty? Twenty? Ten? Five? One? Excuse me, I thought I was talking to the arbiter of right and wrong in the universe there.” Most self-professed followers of “Abrahamic” faiths would be pulling up deck-chairs as soon as they heard there was going to be fireworks, often quite literally, while smugly assuring themselves that it’s the will of their god and ain’t it cool being on the side of righteousness.

Also remember the end of that story: the LORD only found one righteous man in Sodom, and he was the kind of guy who’d send out his daughters to be raped by a mob.

Only because to him the alternative was worse: to have guests under his roof assaulted by a mob. Ancient cultures took obligations of hospitality very seriously (and not just in the Middle East; see, for example, the Wikipedia article on Tartarus for the number of characters in Greek mythology sentenced to eternal punishment for violation of hospitality codes). Lot’s declaration to the mob that he was willing to send out his daughters to them may have been an attempt to shame them into compliance with social norms — later references in the Bible to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah suggest that later writers (e.g., Ezekiel) did not consider their transgression to be necessarily sexual in nature.

I want to see Kavanaugh’s ship sink as much as anybody, but not this way. How did the court of public opinion replace the court of law? Did everybody forget the lessons from Sir Thomas More? What happened to skepticism of eyewitness testimony? Or awareness of false memories? Or innocent until proven guilty? If Kavanaugh is guilty of sexual assault, then let him be convicted in a court of law following due process under the law. And what happens when Trump nominates someone even worse? How many times can we use such tactics? Surely there’s a way to fight Trump without shredding constitutional protections.

We’re aware of that, and that those who suffer trauma usually don’t lie. Deniers lie all the time.

Or innocent until proven guilty? If Kavanaugh is guilty of sexual assault, then let him be convicted in a court of law following due process under the law

Your going all legal is tell you don’t believe the women. You haven’t been paying attention to how women, who lie less than 10% of the time, are treated by the justice system, whereas the men, who have a record of lying, aren’t taken skeptically enough. Also, the only place where innocent until proven guilty comes into play is for someone on the jury hearing the case. Anybody else can make what conclusions we want based on available evidence. There is no problem with Kavanaugh’s rights.
Your talkings points are straight from the misogynist handbook.

@10 Ah no. He’s applying for a job. The standards of evidence do not have to be the same as a trial. If a manager hears rumors that a potential employee had a history of theft then they are not obliged to hire them.

Also,are you serious? Have you been watching the news? There are at least three people who have accused him of scuzzy behaviour. If there’s anything I’ve learnt from the metoo movement is that it’s never just one complaint. Sooner or later others are going to come forwards with other awful stories about Kavanaugh.

Generally only the parts that they like, if they read it at all. Then there is that perpetual problem with actually understanding what they read. Bible based religionists usually read the parts that their pastor, priest, or other religion grifter tells them to read and especially how to interpret it. This greatly reduces independent thought and critical thinking that lead away from believing things that are impossible, unevidenced, and that magic done by a fantasy figure actually works.

yknot(head)@10 tries the old “I’m really on your side but” form of apologetics. Did you NOT see Kavanaugh’s whiny, privileged, evasive, shouting diatribe? It is also interesting that your “skepticism” of eyewitness testimony abruptly stops exactly when just reaching Kavanaugh.

@10, many states have a statute of limitations. In this case, Maryland doesn’t, but…
“Significantly, Ford’s particular allegation may be also be barred by the state’s time limit on prosecutions. Although Maryland is one of few states without a statute of limitations on felony charges of rape and attempted rape, the incident Blasey Ford described—a crime of attempted rape between two minors (a 17-year-old boy or 15-year-old girl)—would have been a misdemeanor in 1982, though it’s a felony now. Crimes prosecuted years later are still punished according to the laws of the time: You can’t be charged for a felony without knowing you’re committing one.”

yknot@#10
Either you have no clue what you are talking about, or you are a concern troll. Are you really claiming that nothing short of a criminal conviction is sufficient to disqualify someone for a seat on the supreme court? Having worked at several summer camps in my younger days, I assure you that someone who was known to have accusations of attempted sexual assault against him would not be hired to work with children simply because the accusations did not result in a criminal conviction. If the accusations had any credibility, his application would immediately be rejected. So either you think that supreme court justices should be held to lower standards than camp counselors, or you believe that none of the women who have come forward with accusations have any credibility. If the former, you are a moron; if the latter, you are a misogynist. Either way, your opinion is an uninformed one.

What lesson was that?
Saint Thomas More was a serial torture-killer of Protestants.

Wikipedia
During More’s chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake for heresy; they were Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, Thomas Dusgate, and James Bainham.[12]:299–306

Doesn’t take much to be a Catholic Saint.
A mass murdering monster burning people alive on stacks of firewood is no problem.

The lessons of Saint Thomas More.
Watch out for Catholics in high political positions with matches, firewood, and rope.
Xianity isn’t a source of morality.
Xianity has gained and held power for 1600 years by killing millions of people.
There are others all equally gruesome and valuable.

AFAIK in the story it’s explicitly to be the other way round: Lot’s daughters get him black out drunk and then force themselves on him while he’s lying in a drunken stupor, to “preserve their father’s seed”. I mean the bible casually describes men raping women all the time, with no consideration for their consent or age and treats them like chattel. But men are also sometimes raped by women which is what is described in that story.

Also I’d be extremely surprised if Kavanaugh doesn’t win his nomination and I think you can already say goodbye to Roe vs Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges… and any hope of Supreme Court decisions reining in the excesses of capitalism and corporatism in the US. The only hope seems to be in the millions of women putting their names on the election rolls. Good luck.
=8(-DX

raven @ 20: Many historians also believe Thomas More was responsible for betraying William Tyndale to the imperial authorities on the Continent (that is, the agents that did so were acting on his direct orders) when he fled England for the “crime” of translating the Bible into English, an act that ultimately lead to Tyndale being strangled and his body burned for heresy. But More gets canonised and has an Oscar-baiting film made about him so everything’s cool. 🙄

(Indeed, there are many parallels between Kavanaugh and More: both are self-serving political operatives who hid their ruthlessness behind a veneer of piety, and who are undeservedly treated as martyrs by people who ought to know better.)

This is a confirmation hearing, not a court of law. As such, since it amounts to determining his fitness for the job to which the President has nominated him, public opinion matters. If accusations end up revealing potential criminal activity, and he is to be prosecuted, that will be handled in an actual court of law later.